An international team of researchers has produced a proof for the latest, and heaviest, universal building block: element number 117. Though currently unnamed, element 117 has excited the chemistry community for several reasons. Beyond being the latest core constituent of creation, it is also a step along the road to useful, super-heavy elements made by man. Until now, engineers have worked exclusively with those elements nature provided for us on Earth, while any new elements forged in particle colliders were transient and of little practical use. That could be on its way to changing.

Atoms are made of three large-scale components: protons, neutrons, and electrons. The number of neutrons in an atom defines which isotope it is, and the number of electrons determines its strength as an ion, but it’s the number of protons that distinguishes one element from another. A one-proton atom is always hydrogen, a two-proton atom is always helium, and so on. We find atoms up to about element 92 (uranium) in nature, though trace amounts of some heavier elements like Plutonium-244 have been found. Past that point, half-lives get too short for a substance to build up enough for us to find it; for instance, element 116 — directly before this new one on the periodic table — has a half-life of a few milliseconds.

However, an idea called the “island of stability” could offer hope in the search for stable, useful elements at the super-heavy end of the atomic scale. Though it has yet to be proven, this theory states that elements with atomic numbers within a certain threshold will have greatly extended half-lives — thus making them potentially useful in science or industry.

There’s a reason we don’t find these elements sitting around in nature, however: creating them is almost impossible, from an energetics standpoint. Not only does it take an unbelievable input of energy to fuse that many protons together (a supernova could handle that part), but the basic physical properties of matter don’t seem to want atoms of those exact proportions. So-called “decay chains” take unstable atoms through a series of successively more stable forms, but these don’t tend to produce the rare elements and isotopes that could be the most interesting to science.

Even when scientists assemble such elements directly in a particle collider, as was done here, they have trouble finding usable elements which will sum to the correct number of atomic particles. Do you create a 117-proton element with a 100-proton atom of fermium and a 17-proton atom of chlorine, or some other combination? While a 117-proton atom will be “element 117” regardless of the number of neutrons it carries, only certain isotopes will be amenable to study or application.

As a result, creating a new element is more complex than just smashing two atoms together. Some optimists think that the island of stability has the potential to change that. If scientists can start to synthesize elements in this mass range, the substances could have million-year half lives like those of their lighter cousins. That’s because super-heavy atomic nuclei are thought to become “deformed” in some ineffable quantum sense, leading to changes in their atomic “magic numbers.”

The island of stability. Notice how chemists like to stick to a metaphor when naming things.

In chemistry, a magic number is any number of protons and neutrons that leads to an extremely chemically stable element. Acknowledged magic numbers include 2, 8, 20, 28, and so on. Past uranium’s size, it’s thought that these deformed magic numbers are responsible for the island of stability, somehow changing the rules about what is and is not stable. The assumption is that breaking into this atomic range will provide a foothold scientists can use to make huge progress in elemental science.

Elements as heavy as number 118 have theoretically been produced, but there is controversy over just what it means to “confirm” their existence on such small time-scales. To confirm element 117 to their satisfaction, this team used all-new technology in the TransActinide Separator and Chemistry Apparatus (TASCA) to sift its signals from the larger storm of background noise. Even more sensitive instruments will likely be needed to push farther up the list of elements, but the rewards of doing so could be profound indeed.

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Avatar1337

It already exists =) google it. It is called AlON.

Luigi A. McCrea

Wow just imagine 10 years from now, just simply amazing.

Marrach

Great Article!

MisterBlat

And so Eridium was discovered. And its symbol became ‘H’. Sorry, hydrogen.

http://www.something.com/ standard

“Atoms are made of three large-scale components: protons, neutrons, and electrons”.
I know what you mean, because quarks, etc, but it still feels bizarre to call them large scale…

Joel Sapp

The title of the article is bad. There was no discussion on how these elements would be useful.

dc

Agreed. What could be a use of these items? Would they be radioactive? If not perhaps they could be used for some sort of shielding or armor.

Ivor O’Connor

They are islands of stability producing no radioactivity. (Unless you hang around for a few million years.)

JohnnyD

Perhaps they would have unique properties WRT superconductivity, superfluidity, or magnetism. All sorts of interesting possibilities. What concerned me was the speculation I read about elsewhere, on fissionable potential, as if they couldn’t think of a better use for a material so incredibly expensive to manufacture, other than to hope it might make vaporizing a city more efficient or convenient somehow. How depressing.

Whatever their properties, the military always gets first crack at finding uses for the really dangerous ones, no doubt to place into the service and betterment of mankind in some uniquely beneficial way only a military mind can divine. Because they are so specifically devoted to concerning themselves with issues of preserving and improving the quality of life, so who better to ask, right?

Ben Pottinger

Just because it’s fissionable doesn’t mean it’s first use is nukes. It could be for energy, or medical imaging among many other techs we can thank the military for. NASA uses a plutonium isotope (one not good for bombs) for its thermal batteries on its probes. Voyager has one, it’s the only way it’s able to still send us data and keep running.

Andris Lauva

At least to maintain war

Richard Melito

I vote Masterchiefium for the name of element 117.

zzzzzzz

i couldn’t agree more with you on this. Please name it Masterchiefium! Actually Microsoft should jump on this; I guess they could fund further research on the element and therefore ‘claim’ naming rights, Im sure their marketing guys could come up with some brilliant stuff if they had a ‘trademark’ element ahahaha.

Zageron

I dunno about Masterchiefium, but simply calling it Halo would be pretty bad ass.

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